


P is for Paragons

by Toastybluetwo



Series: Dragon Age Alphabet - Dagna [16]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toastybluetwo/pseuds/Toastybluetwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, there’s this meme going around that explores various characters in the Dragon Age universe based on the letters of the alphabet. I decided to do some exploration of Dagna, a character that there’s not a lot of information concerning, but I found her spunkiness and perkiness intriguing.</p>
<p>One by one. (Dagna/Sigrun, contains descriptions of the Calling and multiple major character deaths.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	P is for Paragons

When Lucius died, he left Dagna his library – every single book and scroll, some of them hundreds of years old and written by men and women she’d only heard about in tomes of history and in Karl Thekla’s lectures.

She began some of her building or designing sessions by walking to the shelves that held Lucius’s books, her rough fingers caressing the cracked, well-worn spines. Lucius had loved his books and used every last bit of information inside of them. The general condition of many of the tomes reflected this.

She would sit at the table that she had earmarked for the creation of schematics – an old thing that she had bought at a used furniture store simply because she would not have felt guilty about putting gash marks with her compass upon the wooden face. If she spilled ink, she wouldn’t have the desire to kick herself for harming a nice piece of furniture. The table had a purpose, and the purpose was messy.

Then, there was a cat. The cat’s name was Caridin, and he loved to curl up at Dagna’s feet while she sat at the table and created her schematics. He did not jump or hide when Dagna hammered various parts together, or brought squealing and clanking engines to life. Caridin caught the mice that snuck into Dagna’s home from the creek that ran just behind the garden.

Caridin had been a gift from Anders, a final thank you and farewell before Anders sunk into the Deep Roads in search of the two remaining Old Gods. In Dagna’s mind’s eye, she could still see the tiny kitten curled up in Anders’ palm, as he stroked his fur with his long, withered fingertips. Caridin, even as a small kitten, had been afraid of nothing, least of all the half-human, half-Darkspawn creature that had saved him from a rain gutter.

Dagna knew that she would never see Anders again. The darkspawn hordes were unlikely to attack him – after all, he was one of them, and even capable of commanding them if he so chose. But he journeyed into a vast unknown below the world, deep into unimaginable depths, perhaps beyond the Deep Roads altogether, perhaps even beyond any place that dwarven feet had ever trod.

Hanging on a plaque next to a window, a sword of recent dwarven make shined in the light of the new day. The first time that Dagna had touched the sword, eight years beforehand, she immediately and correctly identified the blacksmith who had crafted it. Her father had made this weapon – there was his mark on the very pommel – and with his two hands twined gold and silverite into a work of immense beauty and sharpened it to a dangerous point.

The day that King Alistair of Ferelden gave her the sword, he was moments from heading into the Deep Roads himself, for the last time, for the final moment of battle that acted as the climax of the Calling.

“This was given to me as a present from King Bhelen,” Alistair had said to her, extending the blade to her with both hands. “It was made by one of his best smiths. Well, that’s what he told me. Anyway, I won’t be needing it anymore, since I’m going to die and all. It’ll look stupid in the fist of one of the darkspawn. Not enough spikes and other filthy things.”

Janar had made it for Bhelen, who gave it to Alistair, who gave it, in turn to Dagna. She had something that belonged to two kings, crafted with her father’s hands. The sword was a source of inspiration to her, in the hours where she worried her lip and pondered the next invention she might create, or the next improvement on one of her many machines.

Alistair was dead now – they knew it to be fact. Lyrium hunters reported seeing his armor strung up in effigy, stuffed around a corpse of some sort of rotting creature whose origins could not be identified. Was it Alistair? No one could be certain. Nothing remained to identify this unfortunate soul; it could have very well been another one of the darkspawn that had gone astray, that had ignored orders, or had merely come upon some sort of mishap in the Deep Roads. But Alistair would not have parted with his armor in the same way that he was parted with the dwarven sword, and would certainly not have given the darkspawn such a gift.

A mage was on the throne in Ferelden now. Dagna studied the sword again, and renewed a quiet vow to give this sword to him. She would will it to King Connor once she was dead and she had no such use for mementos of Janar.

Next to the sword stood a window, and on the windowsill, also catching the rays of the new day’s sun, stood a spyglass.

“I’m not going to take this with me.” Dagna could still hear Sigrun’s voice wheezing in her ear every time she looked upon the spyglass. “It’s special. I don’t want the darkspawn to have it. It was a gift from someone that meant a lot to me. You mean even more. You should have it.”

Dagna had shed so many tears as she took the spyglass from Sigrun’s outstretched hand that she could hardly see that beloved, apple-cheeked, tattooed face. She had set the spyglass on the windowsill, and set to doing the thing that she and Sigrun had agreed upon years before. Two on her chest. Six around her waist. Two to each thigh, one to each ankle, one on each bicep, and one attached to her helmet. All bound with strips of white linen. All, individually, promised an end.

Systematically, Dagna bound enough lyrium bombs to Sigrun’s body to level the whole of Kirkwall’s Hightown, let alone the Chantry. Anders might have been proud. She bound them as she sobbed in horror at the way Sigrun’s flesh had become like moss in places and leather in others, sometimes falling away in her hands even as her hair fell away from her head.

“It’ll be fun.” Sigrun smiled beneath the linen and bombs. Her eyes had, days before, taken on a glassy quality to them. “You sure that darkspawn nest is down there? Broodmothers and all? I can make it. You know I can. I’ll make it there. When the ground shakes, you know I’ve made it.”

“Don’t let them take you,” Dagna whispered, kissing her, ignoring the stench that came from between her beloved’s lips. Most of Sigrun was darkspawn now, not living, breathing dwarf. “You won’t, will you?”

“No.” Sigrun was smiling. “I won’t.”

And so she went and so she died, the last one of the Grey Wardens who had destroyed the Mother and the Architect to descend to the Deep Roads as the Calling fell upon them. Dagna vowed quietly to find out what had happened to each and every one of them and to write down their stories in a collection, so that no one would forget what had been done in the days surrounding the end of the Fifth Blight.

She also vowed to leave the spyglass where she had left it, and move it only when the task of writing and researching their tales had been completed.

Some of these stories arrived in the form of letters. Within a year’s time, first-hand accounts of the heroics of the Warden-Commander filled a drawer. Delilah Howe sent not only her brother’s journal, but several of his personal effects as well – a brooch, a ring, and a small whetstone that had been a gift from the Warden-Commander. Oghren had died not in the Deep Roads but in the Rebellion in the same battle that had claimed Lucius; his widow and daughter sent several letters filled with stories that made Dagna’s cheeks burn. Velanna also was denied her Calling; she was killed in an elf uprising in Antiva. Dagna could get no tales from the family Velanna had been staying with, and had decided to write the Wardens again in hopes of something- anything – that could shed light on this shadowy yet feisty figure.

Caridin hopped into her lap, his nimble paws kneading her legs. Dagna studied these things, each in turn – books, sword, spyglass, drawer full of letters and artifacts and then, only then, did she turn her attention to the purring creature that curled up on her lap. With a mind full of memories, she began to stroke Caridin’s fur.

She suddenly longed to know more about her pet’s namesake. Perhaps she would visit Shale again, and see if the golem would be willing to be cordial this time around.

Whatever happened, whoever they had been or whatever gods they worshipped, Dagna vowed that all of them, all of the great people that had touched her life or had brought laughter and smiles to Sigrun’s face, would not go forgotten.

Not a single one of them.


End file.
